Should You Watch: Louie

FX's new comedy "Louie," the brainchild of writer/director/star/producer/probably just about everything else Louis C.K., is a remarkable show. At first glance, it reminds you of some other shows...but it somehow feels unlike just about anything else on TV. It combines footage of the standup comedian in concert with "real-life" footage related to his material, but you certainly won't confuse it with the early "Seinfeld." Speaking of that show, "Curb Your Enthusiasm" brings a loose, improv feel to even the stuff that IS scripted, and "Louie" often captures a similar vibe, but it does so without replicating that experience.

Most importantly, in this era of awkward silences and comedic beats based on discomfort and embarrassment--witness, well, every other sitcom made in the last decade or so--"Louie" thrives on those moments while still creating a singular experience. You have to admire a half-hour comedy, even one on FX, that devotes large chunks of its time to, say, a freewheeling discussion about homosexuality and the use of the word "faggot" in standup comedy, as the second episode did. The setting was a poker game with Louie and his comedian pals, one of whom is gay, and the discussion was explicit, juvenile, and profound all at once. There was no pat solution--Louie showed apparent remorse when his friend explained the meaning of the word and why it is offensive, but the gay jokes resumed at the table--and it felt, for lack of a better word, "real."

Each show has two "life" segments, and some work better than others. In fact, I don't always find the series all that funny, but I do find it mesmerizing. It's a sitcom with an overriding melancholy that looms over the jokes. Louie is divorced, he's getting older, he's kind of pathetic, he gets into inappropriate situations, and it all leaves me kind of depressed. Yet through it all I always get the sense that there's truth here--truth in a fake TV sense, sure, but the kind of exploration of feelings and conditions we don't often get on television, even in today's supposedly sophisticated landscape. It's not a typical sitcom experience, nor even a typical television experience, but you really have to see it to believe it.

You should watch "Louie" if:

*Nothing cheers you up more than being depressed at the end of a half-hour comedy.
*You can relate to or at least empathize with the pressures of an aging divorced father trying to reconnect with women...and often failing miserably or succeeding pitifully.
*You long for the soothing, comforting presence of tenderhearted comics like Jim Norton and Nick DiPaolo.
*You never get tired of hearing C.K.'s bit about the rash his daughter had--well, let's say no more, but suffice to say it figured in the first episode I saw, and frankly I hope he doesn't use it again.
*You enjoy seeing comedian's material before Dane Cook swipes it.
*You haven't already heard a thousand times on the radio the old "Brother Louie" song adapted here as a theme song (I must admit that the song, though overexposed, is perfect, and not just because of the name).